The Blog Herald is due for some (long overdue) maintenance in a few hours. We’re just doing some finishing touches offline, and then we’ll be taking the site down for about a couple of hours. Once you see an “under maintenance” sign in place of the usual BH site, that means we’re already doing some tweaking under the hood. But don’t worry, we’ll still be here.

After that we will be doing some testing to make sure we don’t screw anything up.

If you need to get in touch with us for any reason, you can email editor (at) blogherald (dot) com.

There was a brief post over at 901am.com yesterday by “admin” announcing the acquisition of 910am.com by Splashpress Media, the owners of the Blog Herald-:

We are pleased to announced that Splashpress Media has acquired 901am.com. We remain committed in bringing new media news throughout the day. We are currently working on moving the site to a new server. Thank you for your patience.

What has been missing from this announcement and its aftermath, as one would usually expect, is any word from David Krug himself. In this light, Splashpress have asked me to release the following statement-:

In the aftermath of the 901am.com sale, Splashpress would like to take the opportunity to thank David Krug for the marvellous job he did in building 901am.com and in such a short period. We believe the site still has great potential to grow and to dominate the niche that covers new media news. We are happy to announce that Minic Rivera, contributor at the Blog Herald and former editor of the Blogging Times, has agreed to be editor of 901am. And last, but not least, we would like to wish David Krug a speedy recovery, as he has been unwell now for a few weeks. Please join us in our prayers for him.

Still on the topic of The Blog Herald Japan and our subsequent, unique glimpse into Japanese blogosphere, we’ve had a little internal search to see which posts from BH that have been translated have proved most popular, and thus which of our resident Blog Herald bloggers are most appealing to Japanese blogging tastes.

The most linked post, by Lorelle, is “It’s Catching: Blog Disease“, translated- here. A Japanese blogger wrote a parody version: “Hatena Bookmark Disease“, crediting Lorelle and The Blog Herald Japan with the original version. And this has proved by far the most popular post translated so far. Lorelle’s other posts also get to 2nd and 3rd in the rankings when compared to other translated columns, with Derek following in fourth.

Hoover’s, Inc., a D&B company that gives its customers a competitive edge with insightful information about industries, companies and key decision makers, announced the launch of its new business blog, Bizmology.

Hoover’s editors tap into their industry knowledge and analytical skills to post a new blog every weekday on wide-ranging business topics, resulting in a comprehensive, enlightening and fresh look at what’s happening in the business world today.

“Bizmology takes the unrivaled breadth and depth of Hoover’s content a step further by leveraging and building upon the company’s 15-plus years of experience in creating comprehensive company profiles,” said Paul Pellman, president of Hoover’s. “The additional editorial expertise revealed within Bizmology is like the icing on the cake, whether the reader is initially seeking a snapshot or in-depth review of a company or industry.”

One of our very own, Derek Van Vliet, weekly columnist on social bookmarking and social media, has gotten profiled along with a 20 other prominent individuals in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal.

In the spirit of the New Year, we’d like to thank everyone who participated in our gift giving contest and despite the dozens of entries we had to sift thru, we were forced to break a tie between two really promising blogs that we felt showed the essence of what sharing and giving is all about.

It is our great pleasure to welcome to the Blog Herald another bi-weekly columnist: Aileen Thompson. Aileen will be our specialist “science blogger” bringing us all the latest news and analysis from the world of scientific blogging.

Aileen has more than a quarter century of experience in print media, having made the transitions from lead type to computer photo-typesetting to “user friendly” when Apple took over the industry in the early 1980s. She has been a graphic artist and reporter, editor and writer for newspapers, newsletters, magazines and special events periodicals in several states. read more